Signing a Alaska title takes about ninety seconds once you know which boxes matter. Getting one of them wrong sends the buyer back to a DMV office, a DMV business partner, or the post and the car back to your driveway. Here is the whole thing, taken from the Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles, Department of Administration's own pages and the forms themselves.
Start hereHow to fill out an Alaska titleThe certificate itself, block by block, plus the tear-off strip at the bottom that most sellers throw away with the envelope.Open the walkthrough →Open the page headed Selling a Vehicle in Alaska and it tells you to certify the reading on a vehicle that is less than ten years old. Open Mailed in Title Procedures on the same site and the cut-off is twenty years. Both sentences are live today. The ten-year one has been wrong since the start of 2021, and a seller who trusts it on a 2013 pickup leaves the certification blank on a car that still needs it.
Alaska does not simply adopt the federal wording, so the governing text is the state's own: 2 AAC 92.220(e) excuses a vehicle only where its unladen weight is more than 12,000 pounds, where it is not self-propelled, where it is twenty years old or older, or where it has never been titled or registered before. Note the weight figure - the federal exemption is 16,000 pounds gross vehicle weight rating, and Alaska's is 12,000 pounds unladen, which is a lower bar and catches more pickups. Two further sentences in the same regulation catch people out: only an owner named on the face of the title, or that owner's legal representative, may sign the disclosure, and nobody may sign as buyer and seller in the same transaction.
Twenty model years old or older: No disclosure required. The Division will still record a reading if you give it one, and its own form says so - it is not a requirement of the sale.
Nineteen years old or newer: Certify it. The reading belongs in the odometer certification printed on the title itself, and Form V6 exists only for the case where that section is missing or already used.
Unladen weight over 12,000 pounds, or not self-propelled: Exempt under the state regulation, whatever the age. Trailers get no odometer line at all, but the title still has to be assigned.
You, the seller: Sign and print your name in the Assignment of Vehicle Title by Owner on the certificate, fill in the odometer certification beside it, and hand the buyer the original title and the registration certificate at the moment the vehicle changes hands. That last part is statutory, not a courtesy - AS 28.10.271(b) names both documents.
The buyer: The buyer completes their half of the same assignment, then files Form V1 with the original title within thirty days. There is no county office in this state: the packet goes to a DMV counter, a DMV business partner, or by post to Anchorage.
AND or OR. Read the conjunction printed between the names on the front of the certificate before anyone picks up a pen. OR means one owner's signature releases the title. AND - or any other conjunction, or no conjunction at all - means every owner has to sign.
That last clause is the one people miss, and the Division states it plainly on its Mailed in Title Procedures page: if there is more than one owner joined by any other conjunction, or if there is not a conjunction, then all owners must sign. Two names with nothing between them is not an OR. The regulation behind it is 2 AAC 92.030(c) and (d), which calls the two cases the conjunctive and the disjunctive.
The Division's warning to Alaska sellers is worded as something it is not allowed to do rather than something it would prefer you did: federal law prohibits us from transferring the title if the assignment, including the odometer statement, has not been completed. Do not leave any blank spaces on the assignment is the instruction that follows. Where an American form usually tolerates a dash or an N/A, this one wants a value in every box you are given.
Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles, Department of Administration, title requirements
The full box-by-box walkthrough is here, with a printable checklist.
A signed assignment, an odometer certification with no blank left in it, the ten-day notice, and - for a snowmachine or a quad - a form instead of a title.
Alaska records one lienholder on the face of the certificate, runs no electronic title system, and will not take a PAID stamp for an answer.
Lost, wrong, disputed, or never handed over at all. The surety-bond route is three forms deep and the appraisal has a ninety-day shelf life.
Signing from the slope, from a boat, or from outside the state - through the one notarised authority the Division accepts.
An OR conjunction needs nothing at all. Everything else is either probate or a $150,000 affidavit sworn thirty days after the death.
Junk, salvage and reconstructed are three different brands here, and since August 2025 the middle one has its own application.
The plates stay with the car, so the forms in this group are about the two things that do not: a vanity plate and unused registration money.
AS 28.10.271(a): when the owner of a registered vehicle transfers or assigns the owner's title or interest in the vehicle, the registration of the vehicle expires; however, the registration plates remain on the vehicle. Two things happen at once and only one of them is visible. The registration dies the moment you sign; the aluminium does not move.
There is no way to take a standard Alaska plate with you even if you want to, because there is nowhere for it to go. The Division's line is four words long - standard issue plates are non transferable - and its mailed-in title instructions repeat it. What follows the car is the plate; what follows you is nothing.
Personalized and specialty plates reverse the rule. Those you take off at the handover, and the buyer is issued a new set at no additional charge. If you want yours on your next vehicle, say so in the affidavit section of the V1, quote the plate number, attach a copy of the last registration and pay $5. If you are handing the plate to another person instead, that is Form 814, and until it is signed the plate stays locked to you.
One consequence catches sellers of vanity plates specifically: 2 AAC 92.120(c) makes you surrender a personalized plate to the Division once it has gone sixty days without being on a currently registered vehicle. Sell the car, keep the plate in the garage over the winter, and it can lapse back to the state while you are not looking.
Ten days, counted from the transfer, and there is no form to download. Alaska prints the notice on the certificate itself: a tear-off strip across the bottom of the title headed Notice of Vehicle Sale for Transfer, which you detach before handing the title over and post to Anchorage. If the strip is already gone, or the title is already in the buyer's hands, the same notice is filed free on the Division's Report the Sale or Transfer of a Vehicle service with the VIN, the date and the buyer's name and address.
The ten days are in AS 28.10.271(c), and the sentence after them is the one worth knowing: this notification shall constitute a valid transfer. Filing it is what makes the sale count against the state's record of who owns the vehicle, which is why the Division also promises that once you have told it a transfer is pending it will not renew the registration. Missing the deadline is not a fee - under AS 28.10.493(a) an owner who transfers a vehicle and fails to comply with AS 28.10.271 is guilty of a class B misdemeanour.
The buyer has three times as long as you do.
Your clock is ten days; theirs is thirty. For those twenty days in between the certificate is signed over, the registration has already expired, and the state's record still shows your name - which is exactly the window the notice closes. File it the same afternoon you take the money rather than waiting to see whether the buyer gets round to the counter. Alaska DMV, titles.
Register at a DMV office, a DMV business partner, or the post within 30 days of the purchase. No state sales tax touches the sale, and the V1 has no purchase-price box on it anywhere - the only tax the Division might collect is the biennial motor vehicle registration tax under AS 28.10.431, and only in a municipality that has passed an ordinance electing to levy it. The title fee is $15 and the statute says it covers a transfer as well as a first issue; recording a lender costs another $15; ordinary biennial registration for a car, pickup, van or motorhome is $100.
What they need to bring:
Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles, Department of Administration · figures and rules as of 2026-08-23. Plain-language help with paperwork, not legal advice.
See also: selling a car in Alaska and the rest of the guides.